ESC & YLS Colloquium Series

European Studies Council and Yale Law School Colloquium Series

The European Studies Council and Yale Law School Colloquium Series is a year-long series on the future of European integration. It is co-organized by the European Studies Council and the Yale Law School European Law Association.

Watch video recordings of the series on the European Studies Council YouTube channel.

 

Upcoming Events

ESC-YLS Colloquium Event #4: Rethinking Democracy in and for the European Union | Tuesday, April 9, 2024, 4:15pm ET

The absence of democratic control at the EU level has challenged the legitimacy and functioning of the EU which boasts Democracy as one of its fundamental values, especially in the context of the postwar order of authoritarian liberalism. This panel aims to identify the challenges that await the EU regarding the (de)vitalization of democratic credentials as well as discuss the future of Democracy in the Union.

Prof. Michael Wilkinson (London School of Economics)
Prof. Vivien A. Schmidt (Boston University)
Discussant and Chair: Prof. Samuel Moyn (Yale University)
 
Michael A. Wilkinson is Professor at LSE Law. He works in the areas of constitutional theory, European integration, and legal, political, and social theory. His monograph on Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe (OUP, 2021) was selected as one of the ‘key books of the year on the future of Europe’ by the Review of Democracy. He recently co-edited a collection on a new approach to the study of constitutional law, The Cambridge Handbook on the Material Constitution (CUP, 2023). He has held visiting professorships at Cornell, Paris II, the National University of Singapore, and Keio University, Tokyo, and his work has been translated into Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish.
 
Vivien A. Schmidt is Professor Emerita of International Relations and Political Science, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University, where she taught from 1998 to 2023. Prof. Schmidt is currently Visiting Fellow in the Schuman Center at the European University Institute in Florence, Honorary Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, and Senior Fellow in the Zoe Institute.  Over the years, she has held visiting and affiliate positions at a number of European universities. In addition to LUISS University, these include Sciences Po in Paris, the Free University of Berlin, the Free University of Brussels, the European University Institute in Florence, Oxford University, the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, and Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, where she co-chaired the EU study group from 2008 to 2023. Professor Schmidt has published extensively on European political economy, institutions, and democracy as well as on the role of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). Her latest book is Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (Oxford, 2020) which received the Best Book Award (2021) from the American Political Science Association’s Ideas, Knowledge, Politics section and Honorable Mention for the Best Book Award (2019-2020) of the European Union Studies Association.  Recent honors and awards include decoration as Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the European Union Studies Association, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for her current project on the ‘rhetoric of discontent,’ a transatlantic investigation of populism.
 

Samuel Moyn is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. He received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000 and a law degree from Harvard University in 2001. He came to Yale from Harvard University, where he was Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History. Before this, he spent 13 years in the Columbia University history department, where he was most recently James Bryce Professor of European Legal History. His areas of interest in legal scholarship include international law, human rights, the law of war, and legal thought, in both historical and current perspective. In intellectual history, he has worked on a diverse range of subjects, especially twentieth-century European moral and political theory.

 

ESC-YLS Colloquium Event #5: Today’s Transformation of Europe | Fall 2024 (Date TBA)

In his seminal article on “The Transformation of Europe” published in the Yale Law Journal in 1991, Prof. J.H.H. Weiler argued that the “transformation” concerned the most the evolving relationship between the EU and its Member States, leaving, on a quite optimistic note, question marks regarding the future road to be taken by the European integration project: will the EU evolve toward a unitarian – a full political Union – or communitarian model – based on interdependence without involving the negation of the State? The last colloquium aims to take stock of the transformations which occurred since 1991. Prof. J.H.H. Weiler will tackle the question of whether the Church of European legal integration is facing and should face a reformation while Prof. Nicholaïdis will discuss the Constitution of a Democratic European Polity.

Prof. J.H.H. Weiler (NYU)
Prof. Kalypso Nicholaïdis (EUI)

Discussant and Chair: Prof. Samuel Moyn (Yale University)

Samuel Moyn is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. He received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000 and a law degree from Harvard University in 2001. He came to Yale from Harvard University, where he was Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History. Before this, he spent 13 years in the Columbia University history department, where he was most recently James Bryce Professor of European Legal History. His areas of interest in legal scholarship include international law, human rights, the law of war, and legal thought, in both historical and current perspective. In intellectual history, he has worked on a diverse range of subjects, especially twentieth-century European moral and political theory.

Previous Events

ESC-YLS Colloquium Event #3: The Future of Geopolitical Europe in a World of Energy Dependency | Monday, March 4, 2024, 4:15pm ET

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine administered an unprecedented shock to the European and global energy markets, triggering emergency interventions and market reforms to limit the impact of the crisis on energy prices and supply security. More fundamentally, the supply shock sparked a profound reappraisal of foreign supply and infrastructure dependencies (for example, on China), leading states to adopt new legal initiatives to strengthen the resilience of their clean energy supply chains. Energy geopolitics and supply security are now firmly back at the centre of global energy policy, and in this new geopolitical reality, we critically need to reassess the role of energy law in the creation - and avoidance - of dangerous energy dependencies. In this panel, the speakers and discussant will focus their intervention on the role of the European Union in light of the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, with a special focus on the dependencies on the energy sector and the connections between natural resources and political development.

Prof. Anatole Boute (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Dr. Kong Chyong (Columbia University)
Discussant: Danae Azaria (NYU)
Chair: Isabela Mares (Yale)
 
Anatole Boute is a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, specialising in energy, climate, and investment law. He is the author of Energy Security along the New Silk Road (CUP 2019) and Russian Electricity and Energy Investment Law (Brill Nijhoff 2015), and is a member of the IBA Academic Advisory Group on Energy, Environment, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure Law. He was admitted to the Brussels Bar in 2009, and regularly assists development banks, governments, and investors on questions of energy and climate regulation. His research on the energy crisis has garnered attention from media outlets including CNBC, Al Jazeera, CGTN, and the Financial Times.
 
Dr. Kong Chyong is an energy economist and policy analyst with a strong background and more than 15 years of experience applying economics and operational research methods to energy and climate policy questions. Kong’s research interests include energy system economics and modelling to understand deep decarbonisation pathways and large-scale power and global gas market modelling. He also works on the economics and geopolitics of Russian natural gas exports, focusing on Russo-Ukrainian bilateral relations and impacts on Europe and global gas markets. Kong holds a PhD in Energy Economics and Policy and an MPhil in Technology Policy from the University of Cambridge. Before his studies at Cambridge University, Kong was a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine.
 
Dr. Danae Azaria is Associate Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London (UCL), and the Principal Investigator of the ‘State Silence’ project funded by a Grant of the EU’s European Research Council. She is a laureate of the Guggenheim Prize in Public International Law (2017) for her monograph ‘Treaties on Transit of Energy via Pipelines and Countermeasures’ (OUP), the Book Reviews editor of the British Yearbook of International Law, Co-Rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Submarine Pipelines and Cables, and member of the ILA Committee on Use of Force by Invitation. She is a member of the Advisory Panel of Public International Law of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and has held prestigious fellowships including currently as Senior Global Hauser Fellow at NYU Law School (2023-2024), and previously as Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School (2023) and Senior Humboldt Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Humboldt University Berlin, 2019-2021). In addition to her scholarship on international energy law and State responsibility, she has written widely in the field of international law, inter alia on the International Law Commission, the law of treaties, law of the sea, the intersection between trade and security, and acquiescence. Her research has appeared in journals including the European Journal of International Law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, International and Community Law Review, Cambridge International Law Journal, American Journal of International Law, AJIL Unbound, British Yearbook of International Law. She is on the European Union’s list of potential Arbitrators and Experts on Trade and Sustainable Development in the EU’s bilateral disputes under trade agreements with third States. She regularly advises international organizations and governments on issues of public international law.
 
Isabela Mares is the Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science and the Director of the European Union Center at Yale. She specializes in the comparative politics of Europe. Professor Mares has written extensively on labor market and social policy reforms, the political economy of taxation, electoral clientelism, reforms limiting electoral corruption. Her current research examines the political responses to antiparliamentarism in both contemporary and historical settings.
 
 

ESC-YLS Colloquium Event #2: EU Borders in a Post-Colonial World | Monday, February 19, 2024, 4:15pm ET

The so-called European “refugee crisis” of 2015 and its aftermath have revealed the true face of the EU: a fortress keeping out third-country nationals from the former colonies leading to thousands of migrants dying in the Mediterranean or at the Belarusian borders, when they are not tortured in the Libyan prisons – financed with EU money. On the other hand, the EU has recently been praised for its solidarity with the Ukrainian refugees welcoming them on the basis of the temporary protection directive although some have denounced the racial selection behind it. This panel aims to discuss the EU as a vehicle of ‘imperial amnesia’ in light of what is happening at EU borders. The speakers will discuss the mechanisms and narrative deployed by the EU and its Member States to keep some migrants out and let others in, particularly in the broader context of post-colonialism and Eurowhiteness.

Prof. Dimitry Kochenov (Central European University)
Dr. Hans Kundnani (NYU / Royal Institute of International Affairs)
Chaired by Prof. Seyla Benhabib (Yale University / Columbia University)
 
Dimitry V. Kochenov leads the Rule of Law research at CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest and is Professor of Legal Studies at CEU Department of Legal Studies in Vienna. This spring he is also Malyi Fellow at Chicago Law School. Prof. Kochenov focuses on citizenship, justice, colonialism and the principles of public law and held visiting positions and fellowships at Princeton, Oxford, NYU Law School, LUISS, Turin, Osaka and UNAM inter many alia. He advises governments and international organizations in the matters of his interest and seved as the founding chairman of the Investment Mirgation Council (Geneva). His latest book Citizenship (MIT Press) was translated into several languages and reviewed in the NYRB.
 
Hans Kundnani is a visiting fellow at the Remarque Insitute at New York University and an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop fellow. He was previously the director of the Europe programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London. His most recent book is Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (2023).
 

Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita at Yale University where she taught from 2001 to 2020.  She is currently Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Law Adjunct at Columbia University, and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Philosophy. She is also a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. She is currently at work on a Monograph for Polity Press called “At the Margins of the Modern State” and has edited a collection of articles with Ayelet Shachar on Migration and Refugee topics called, Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects: Migration and Asylum New Border Regimes.

 
 

ESC-YLS Colloquium Event #1: Rule of Law Backsliding and New Democracy Deficit in the EU | Tuesday, December 5, 2023, 4:15pm ET

In the past decade, Europe has witnessed a wave of democratic backsliding, erosion of the rule of law, and the rise of illiberal autocracy. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán is using his power to undermine the institutions of Hungarian Democracy while in Poland, the governing party, Law and Justice, has waged war against the independence of the judiciary. Prof. Kim Lane Scheppele, in her seminal piece Autocratic Legalism, speaks powerfully of “constitutional malice” to describe autocrats who hijack constitutions and exploit the superficial appearance of both democracy and legality for their own anti-democratic and extra-legal ends. This panel aims to debate the (in)ability of the EU to face autocracy and the efficiency of the measures adopted by the EU, the cut of EU funds being the latest to date. Professor Kim Lane Scheppele will provide insights into the European Union’s democracy deficit and Professor Laurent Pech will shift the conversation to the future of the rule of law in the European Union.

Prof. Kim Scheppele (Princeton): “The New Democracy Deficit”
Prof. Laurent Pech (University College Dublin): “The Future of the Rule of Law ”
Chaired by Prof. Isabela Mares (Yale)

Kim Lane Scheppele is the Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs and director ofthe Program in Law and Normative Thinking (PLANT) at Princeton University. A specialist in comparative constitutional law and European law, Scheppele has focused on the rise and fall of constitutional democracy with a special focus on Eastern Europe. Living in Hungary and Russia for extended periods as these two countries were discovering democracy after Soviet rule, she has also tracked the collapse of democracy in both places, with consequences for the broader European project, in more than 100 publications in social science journals, law reviews and edited volumes in the US and Europe. Her article, “Autocratic Legalism” (University of Chicago Law Review 2018) launched an international research project on the decline of democracy including more than 400 researchers in the Global South and became a best-seller as a small book in Hebrew during the democracy protests in Israel in 2023. Her book, Destroying Democracy by Law, will be out next year with Harvard University Press.

 
Laurent Pech is Full Professor of Law, Dean of Law and Head of the Sutherland School of Law. He is also a Visiting Professor of Law at Bordeaux University, a Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest, and the co-director of The Good Lobby Profs which he co-founded in 2021. From 2018 to 2022, Laurent was a member of a H2020 funded four-year multidisciplinary research project on “Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and the Rule of Law” (RECONNECT). He is currently a member of the editorial board of the Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, a member of the advisory board of RECLAIM (Human Rights NGO based in Brussels) and a member of the international advisory boards of GEM-DIAMON (EU Horizon funded research project) and RESILIO (Resilience observatory on the rule of law in Europe funded by Stiftung Mercator). Laurent has been a visiting professor at many institutions, including his alma mater: Aix-Marseille University and most recently, the University of Bologna. 
 
Professor Pech specialises in EU Public Law and has lectured in a variety of subjects including EU Constitutional Law, EU Internal Market Law, EU Competition Law and European Human Rights Law. He was Jean Monnet Chair of European Public Law from 2014-17. Prior to his appointment at Middlesex University, Laurent was Jean Monnet Lecturer in EU Public Law at the National University of Ireland Galway. During the course of his academic career, Laurent also worked in Canada (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Canada Research Chair on Globalization, Citizenship and Democracy) and in the United States (Emile Noel Fellow at NYU Law). He has worked as a legal consultant in many post-conflict or EU candidate countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Latvia and Montenegro. He has also worked as an external examiner at many institutions including the Law Society of Ireland  and regularly works as an expert evaluator for national research funding bodies as well as the European Research Executive Agency. Laurent is the author of one casebook, two monographs, multiple commissioned reports and studies, and more than one hundred scholarly publications, on such subjects as rule of law backsliding in Europe, the right to an independent tribunal established by law and the right to free speech in comparative law. He also regularly provides expert advice on rule of law matters, including in the context of judicial proceedings either before national or European courts.
 

Isabela Mares is the Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science and the Director of the European Union Center at Yale. She specializes in the comparative politics of Europe. Professor Mares has written extensively on labor market and social policy reforms, the political economy of taxation, electoral clientelism, reforms limiting electoral corruption. Her current research examines the political responses to antiparliamentarism in both contemporary and historical settings.

Professor Mares is the author of five books. These include The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development (New York: Cambridge University Press 2003), Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment (New York: Cambridge University Press 2006), From Open Secrets to Secret Voting (New York: Cambridge University Press 2015), Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral clientelism in Eastern Europe (co-authored with Lauren Young, Oxford University Press 2018) and Protecting the Ballot: How First Wave Democracies Ended Electoral Corruption (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2022).

The Politics of Social Risk was awarded the Gregory Luebbert best book in comparative politics award by the American Political Science Association and the best book in European Politics by the Council for European Studies. Conditionality and Coercion was awarded the William Riker award for Best Book in Political Economy by the American Political Science Association, the Best book in European Politics and was a runner up for the Gregory Luebbert Award. Her articles have been awarded best prizes by the APSA sections on Comparative Politics, Representation and Electoral Systems and History and Politics, among others.  Professor Mares is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Simon Guggenheim Foundation.